Helping Behavior

Definition

Helping behavior is providing aid or benefit to another person. It does not matter what the motivation of the helper is, only that the recipient is assisted. This is distinguished from the more general term prosocial behavior, which can include any cooperative or friendly behavior. It is also distinguished from the more specific term altruistic behavior, which requires that the motivation for assisting others be primarily for the well-being of the other person or even at a cost to oneself.

History and Background

The value of one person helping another is an ancient virtue discussed by the Greeks, evident across cultures and civilizations, and pervasive in world religions. One ancient Greek philosopher, Plato, suggested that groups of people needed to form social contracts to ensure that individuals would restrain their own selfish behavior for the good of others. Aristotle saw human nature as more innately good. He also described the relative positive feelings of the giver and receiver for one another. According to Aristotle, these feelings are greater for the person giving help than the help recipient. The ancient Chinese Confucian value “Jen” is a benevolence or charity toward others and is regarded as the highest of Confucian values.

The ancient Greeks and Chinese are not the only ones concerned with helping behavior. Almost all world religions have some version of the Golden Rule—people should treat others as they would like to be treated. The Christian Bible promotes care for each other, the poor, and the needy. It also tells the parable of the Good Samaritan, who helped a stranger in distress along the roadway. This parable has become the modern ideal model of positive helping behavior. Maimonides, the Jewish Rabbi and philosopher, described the Golden Ladder of Charity, or eight degrees of goodness in helping others. Charity toward others is the third Pillar of Islam (Zakat) and involves an annual obligation to give to those in need. Buddhism's Noble Eight Fold Path encourages helping others through right speech, action, and livelihood. In Hinduism, kindness to all creatures is important because all creatures are manifestations of [Page 421]God. Furthermore, helping to reduce others' suffering is good karma, or a positive effect that a person's behavior has on subsequent incarnations.

In modern, scientific approaches, social psychologists have been at the forefront of understanding how and why people help others. However, very little was written on helping behavior until a key historical event: the murder of Catherine “Kitty” Genovese on March 13, 1964. The failure of people in the area to help during the attack made newspaper headlines and spurred a great deal of commentary. Social psychologists Bibb Latané and John Darley were inspired to study what decision-making processes were involved in deciding whether to help in an emergency situation. Latané and Darley's work was among the first of thousands of professional journal articles and books on the topic.

Types

In people's everyday lives there are innumerable small acts of helping, like lending a pen to a fellow student. There are also very large acts of helping that include donating large sums of money or rescuing someone from a burning building. P. L. Pearce and P. R. Amato classified the kinds of helping as falling along three dimensions: level of planning and formality, directness of the help, and seriousness of the need. Level of planning and formality can range from very formal and planned, like working as a hospital volunteer each week, to very spontaneous and informal, like helping someone who has dropped some papers in the hallway. Directness of help refers to level of contact with the recipient of help from very direct, like helping a young girl tie her shoes, to very indirect, like mailing off a charity donation to help hurricane victims. Finally, the seriousness of the need should be taken into account. There is a big difference in lending someone a few pennies when he or she is short at the grocery store and doing CPR and rescue breathing on someone who has had a heart attack. The consequences of the former are very small, whereas the consequences of the latter could mean the difference between life and death.

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